Kevin Helms
A student of Austrian economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open source systems, network effects and the intersection of economics and cryptography.
We do not see a viable business in India – Exchange Bitcoin News
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) says India is currently not a viable business environment for its cryptocurrency exchange, citing a strict tax regime. The executive explained: “Binance is going to countries where regulations are pro-crypto and pro-business.”
Binance’s CEO of Indian crypto community
The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), currently does not see India as a viable country to expand its crypto exchange operations. He elaborated at a Techcrunch Crypto conference on Thursday:
To be honest, I don’t think India is a very crypto friendly environment.
Zhao is particularly disheartened by the crypto tax regime that the government of India implemented earlier this year. In addition to taxing crypto income at 30%, crypto transactions are subject to 1% tax deduction at source (TDS).
Referring to India’s aggressive tax environment, the Binance CEO said, “If you’re going to tax 1% on every transaction, there aren’t going to be that many transactions.”
He emphasized:
A user can trade 50 times a day and they will lose about 70% of their money. There is going to be no volume for an order book type exchange. So we don’t see a viable business in India today.
“We just have to wait. We are in conversation with a number of industry associations and influential people and are trying to put some logic there, CZ continued.
“We are trying to get this message across, but tax policies usually take a long time to change,” Zhao warned, adding:
Binance goes to countries where the regulations are pro-crypto and pro-business. We don’t go to countries where we don’t want a sustainable business – or any business, regardless of whether we go or not.
Several other global cryptocurrency exchanges have attempted to launch in India, including Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. The exchange tried to launch in India in April, but soon stopped services. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in May that the firm disabled support for the local payment system UPI “due to some informal pressure from the Reserve Bank of India.”
While cryptocurrency income and transactions are taxed, India still does not have a cryptocurrency regulatory framework. The Indian Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, earlier said that crypto regulation will be one of the focus topics during India’s G20 presidency. The government hopes to establish a technology-driven regulatory framework for crypto after discussing it with other G20 countries.
What do you think of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s comments? Let us know in the comments section below.
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